Quote Originally Posted by LMN View Post
I've heard this before but I don't know details about the actual dive. All I know, and I might be wrong, it is that it was inferred that the arrow pointing in the other direction led to their death based on their dive profile showing that they kept going back and forth through the Half Hitch. If that is the case, when does one stop going back and forth between contradicting arrows? When does one says "screw it, I've felt this arrows before and it makes no sense" and decides to go past the arrow that points the opposite way just to see/feel a second directional arrow? I've been through Half Hitch, it is not something one would not remember going back through it. It changes depth on both ends going through it and the upstream and downstream ends are very different, one could not mistake which direction they were going even in zero viz.
There are a lot of factors to this episode (and having to go from memory). The half hitch had shifted, though it never really collapsed, and this deposited fine clay silt through out the area,which caused an easy silt out. The line through the area was repaired with white line to re-route it, and that is where I understand the line arrow facing the wrong way was seen. The divers were from up north, and were 1-2 time a year cave divers, so things like knowledge of the system, peak skills for anti-silting etc may not been 100%. All these things became the perfect storm of Murphy. The Nitek computer was fairly new with the ability to download profiles, and it showed they had gone back and forth, with conflicting line arrows being an issue. Somewhere along the way they figured out that problem because must have felt the half hitch had shifted again, because they tried to no-mount through one of the areas off to the side. The question was how much time/air was lost because of navigating conflicting line arrows, which could have helped a self rescue. When does one say ,"screw it"- remember when you are stressed, and in low viz etc, your rationalization skills are impaired. This was an accident, with many things going wrong on different levels. What is scary is there are people actually training other cave divers that putting a conflicting line arrow on the line is okay, and there is difference between a permanent line arrow that exists already, a personal line arrow you place for your use, and contradiction is okay. I remember having to swim out over 2000ft back in JB when a collapse blew out the system and had inches of viz. I am thankful I had line arrows to aide my navigation and didn't have to deal with a confusing/conflicting line arrows.